Issue highlights-clinical cytometry (cytometry part B) November 2011

The development of flow cytometry techniques began in 1934 with initial attempts by Andrew Moldavan, a bacteriologist who counted the cells in a flowing capillary system. Moldavan pumped cells through a capillary tube focused under a microscope for visualization. The invention of photometry allowed the measurement of differentially-stained cells, and Louis Kamentsky developed the first multiparameter flow cytometer in 1965 to identify and count the cancer cells in cervical tissue specimens.
In...

Confocal microscopy is an advanced microscopic technique. The prime advantage of the confocal microscope over other microscopy techniques is its ability to block the out-of-focus light from the illuminated samples using pinholes. It is widely used with fluorescence optics to obtain high-resolution, sharp contrast images. Unlike optical microscopes, confocal microscopes use a focused beam of light laser to scan the entire sample surface at different z-planes. These microscopes are, therefore,...

Immunocytochemistry (ICC) and immunohistochemistry (IHC) are techniques that use antibodies to check for specific proteins or antigens in a sample. The technique was first published by Albert Coons in 1941 to detect the presence of pneumococcal antigen in tissue sections from mice infected with Pneumococcus. Immunocytochemistry helps localization of proteins or antigens in individual cells like blood cells, stem cells, etc., while immunohistochemistry does the same for tissue samples.
These...